The Unique Skill you ALREADY Have to Earn a Side Income (with Latisha Styles)

Summary

In this episode, Anthony chats with Latisha Styles. Latisha is a successful coach in helping people realize their unique skills. She’s been featured in notable publications like Forbes and Business Insider. Today, she talks about the process of how she helps people realize and use their unique skills, how it’s like to work with her, and her final tips and takeaways, plus a bonus webinar so tune in until the very end!

Link and Resources

Contact

Call or text 212-401-2990 if you’d like to work with Anthony (or any of our guests).

Full Transcript

ANTHONY: Hey everybody, today you’re gonna learn that you already have a unique skill that can help you earn a side income, believe it or not. A lot of people don’t really realize that either think they don’t have special talents or they acknowledge that they’re pretty good at this or that, but they don’t realize that it’s something that is often monetizable, and pretty much I think I might even say everything is monetizable in this day and age. And that’s why I’ve asked to talk with LaTisha Styles, his LaTisha, thanks for joining us.

LATISHA: Hi, thanks for having me, I’m excited to be here.

ANTHONY: LaTisha is a very successful coach focusing on helping folks realize their unique skills, and she’s actually been featured on some notable publications including Forbes, Fast Company, and Business Insider, so we have a real expert here to help us, guide us through this process. But first, let’s get to know you a little bit LaTisha, I know you, is it true, did I read that you were born in Brooklyn, is that right?

LATISHA: Yes, I was, I was born in Brooklyn, and when I was about six years old my dad got a job in Georgia, and so we ended up moving down south, and so even though I was born in Brooklyn, I definitely identify as a southern girl, for sure.

ANTHONY: Very cool, do you come back often?

LATISHA: I do, I still have family in Long Island, in Queens, and I think that’s it, Long Island and Queens, yeah.

ANTHONY: So tell us a little bit about your business, how did you get started in helping people, coaching people to sort of realize their earning potential?

LATISHA: Yeah, sure, so I started as a personal finance blogger, believe it or not, and I had graduated, it was the Great Recession, I was having a hard time finding a job. I had this finance degree, which was not the best degree to have at that time, but I decided to take what I had learned in college and everything that I had been going through with my own personal finances and start a personal finance blog. Over the next five years, I grew that, essentially which was kind of a side hustle, I grew that personal finance blog from just writing every day into something that grew into almost a full-time income, and I had finally gotten a job, finally got a job in finance and I still kept working on that blog. And I was figuring out how to market my blog, how to market myself, how to do social media, management, marketing, and all of that. And when I decided to essentially take those skills and turn that into my business there was a friend of mine who had reached out to me and he said, hey, I’ve noticed what you’ve been doing with your blog, you’ve been growing it over the last couple years, I’m starting a new business and I don’t know anything about any of that. I think I need to have a blog, I think I need to have a social media presence. I definitely want to be able to pitch and get myself into media and I’ve seen that you’ve been able to do all of this, so I would love your help. And I was a little taken aback at the time because I didn’t think that the skills that I had were even that valuable, I was like, I’m just sitting, I’m just a blogger, right? But I realized that I did have a skill that I could use and so I took on that first client, that was my first consulting client. I continued to take on clients here and there, and I eventually replaced my full-time income, I was able to leave my full-time job and start, essentially, a marketing-consulting company. And as I did that I had people coming to me, asking me, once again, how did you do it? How were you able to figure out what your skill was? How were you able to offer that to a client? How were you even able to get more than just one client? And that’s when I started teaching and helping and training people in how to identify their unique skill, turn it into their own business and getting really specific with helping them with marketing and sales funnels and all the things that I had spent all that time learning on my own, I still use that in my coaching and training business now.

ANTHONY: You’re reminding me, your story about your first, your friend who asked you to help him out, you’re reminding me of this book that I’m reading by Russell Brunson, I don’t know if you know him, from ClickFunnels, so I’m reading Expert Secrets and he mentions that you may not think you’re an expert, but you don’t have to be the top expert in the world in that particular field, you only need to know a little bit more than the person you’re helping to be helpful to them, to be valuable to them, and that’s kind of like the realization most people need to sort of wrap their heads around would you say?

LATISHA: Absolutely, I thought that I needed to be an expert, but I really was just a couple of steps ahead of the person that I was helping who didn’t know anything about marketing and blogging, and it’s something that I continued on to do. There are a lot of people who believe, well, what makes me an expert or who am I to even help people in this area? And I truly believe that you have a unique skill no matter what level that skill is, you could help someone who needs help with the skill you have.

ANTHONY: Can you tell us a little bit about, I guess this might be hard to say, but do you have a typical client or an age range or a demographic that you serve?

LATISHA: Typically my clients are women, however, I do have men that often come to me who need help, but I typically have clients that are women. I don’t know why that is, but I often market to women. As far as the age range.

ANTHONY: Your website is pink, so, I mean, come on.

LATISHA: That’s usually what happens, and so as far as the age range, usually when people quote unquote wake up and realize that they either need an additional stream of income or they’re not quite as happy as they thought they would be in their career or they feel like they want to do something different, is usually around the age range of like early 30s, because they’ve been in their career for maybe six-plus years, and this is the time to make the decision, are you going to continue on and get to that mid and senior level and see your career on that way? Or are you gonna choose to maybe potentially become an entrepreneur? So that’s one question that they usually have. The other question is, well, I’ve already kind of gotten to the place in my career that I’d like to be, but I’m a little bored. I have all this time and I figure I want to do something different, and so usually the age range of people that I’m helping is those people who are kind of mid-level career, they have experience in their career, and they’re starting to realize that they either want an additional stream of income or they just want to do something on the side or they want to maybe go in towards entrepreneurship.

ANTHONY: Asking as a father and a husband, I’m curious, how often are you seeing folks who are either married or have kids? Because obviously having that sort of level of responsibility would impact that kind of decision.

LATISHA: Oh, absolutely, I do often see parents who come through, a lot of times, especially when I’m working with women some of them are single moms and their thing is I need an additional stream of income, I’m the single mom, I’m bringing in all of the income, I want to be able to provide for my children in a bigger way, in something that would look like a dual-income household. And so I do often get single moms that come to me, but also parents just in general who they kind of feel like their time is valuable, and they want to spend that time with their children, and they don’t want to spend all of their time working in that full-time job going after the bigger and better positions in their career because they know that that’s gonna come with a bigger time commitment, and so they really are trying to create essentially a lifestyle business, something that will allow them to still travel with their kids and see those plays and all of those things that are important to them as a parent. And I think in general there’s a shift that we’re seeing, especially in the millennial generation, there’s a little bit of a shift that we’re seeing instead of a keen focus on career and getting as far as you can in your career and doing it no matter how much time it takes versus attempting to grow a lifestyle that does not necessarily have a work-life balance, but it’s more skewed towards the area of life and having that time to really be with your kids, be present, and share with them maybe that childhood that you didn’t quite get growing up.

ANTHONY: I think I’m considered late Gen Xer, and I’m definitely seeing that amongst my cohorts as well.

LATISHA: Yeah, definitely, I see that trend for sure.

ANTHONY: Let’s get into some nitty-gritty examples, let’s get into the meat of this conversation. Can you give us an example, I mean I’m sure you don’t want to share the details of your clients necessarily, you know, for privacy reasons, but maybe you can give us some generic or anonymized examples of a type of person who’s come to you and maybe really didn’t think, on the surface at least, that they didn’t have any unique skills that they can use but how you helped sort of dig that out with them.

LATISHA: So, actually, I had one client who came to me, she was a full-time doctor, and she really wanted to help and train and teach students who were pre-med students into how to get the best placement so that they could go to the best school, so that they could get the best job and all of that. And that’s her unique skill, she had spent years and years and years as a doctor, so she knew exactly what it took in order to become a well-known doctor and get that placement in a really, really good position, and she wanted to turn around and she wanted to use that skill and she wanted to help other pre-med students in order to get that really good placement. So we sort of worked on that, we worked on how to position her services, how to position herself, how to move from just doing one-on-one coaching into creating a leverage program, and that was something that really, really helped her and she was able to get two clients when she just was kind of first starting out. And so something like that where you sort of already have expertise in your area. It’s something you either enjoy doing and maybe it’s a side hobby, or it’s something that you’ve been doing in your career for years that now you’re ready to either teach or offer a done-for-you service.

ANTHONY: Your example’s interesting to me because you would think that a physician, a doctor, would try to, her unique skill would be that she’s a doctor, not that she got into med school, right, I mean that’s interesting. How did you sort of, what path did you take with her to arrive at that last, the winning skill I guess?

LATISHA: Well, a lot of times what I see is that you already know what that skill is, it’s usually the thing that you’re most passionate about, but sometimes people are scared to actually admit or even go after that thing because a lot of times they think either everyone else is doing it, so what else could I bring to it? Or they think, would anyone actually even pay for this? And so a lot of times that fear is really what holds people back from taking the action. In her case, she was a little concerned because even though she was getting questions from people and they were asking her and she was answering their questions, she actually wasn’t quite sure that someone would pay her in order to get that help from her at a higher level versus just kind of getting questions answered here and there. So what I find is that people really, they kind of already know what their skill is, and when I ask them a couple questions to just kind of figure out, are you passionate about it, do you feel like that’s your purpose and calling, or is it something you want to do just to make some extra money? Usually we can get really clear on what their unique skill is.

ANTHONY: That’s definitely one of those limiting mindsets that plagues many of us. We put these caps on what we’re worth, and it’s really just a mental block, yeah?

LATISHA: Yeah, absolutely, and I feel like a lot of times that mental block comes because we’re just so entrenched in the traditional mindset of go to college, get a job, work until you get to retirement. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I’m not an anti-college person, obviously, I have two degrees, and I appreciate the education that I got in college, everything that I went through to go through college, even the student loan debt. I appreciate college. But what I will say is that versus the traditional mindset, there’s now a new mindset that’s coming through in how about we just enjoy life versus going the path that everyone else recommends? Why not take a moment, stop, pause, and think, what should my personal path be? And essentially give yourself permission in order to kind of deviate from that traditional path.

ANTHONY: Absolutely. Let’s jump into another example, do you have another situation that you can tell us about that will help us sort of understand what it’s like to not think you have a skill but actually have it under there somewhere?

LATISHA: Another client that I work with, he was a financial advisor, and this was something that he did full time. Now, this one was a little bit of a, I don’t want to say a landmine, but we had to be very careful because typically if you’re a financial advisor, if you work with a registered investment advisor, there are some stipulations when it comes to outside business activity and the things that you can do. And me having a financial background I was very familiar with that. What he wanted to do was he wanted to really teach, his skill was to be a teacher, he had a heart of teaching people, and so what we did was obviously he had to go through the compliance of letting them know that he was essentially creating some training courses and he started doing some training and some webinars, some teaching courses. and he started selling those on his own. And that was something where it was very fulfilling for him to feel like I can still do my full-time job as a financial adviser and do all those things to help clients where they need to be helped, but now I can also fulfill my unique skill and my talent and what I actually have a passion for, which is teaching people, not just showing them, not just giving them the fish, but actually showing them how to fish. And that was his skill and his passion and that’s where we helped him develop that.

ANTHONY: What subject matter was he teaching? Was it related to his financial advisory job?

LATISHA: It was, but just it was a little bit different. So it wasn’t specifically advice, obviously, because he’s not able to give advice outside of being with a registered investment advisor, so it was more educational, the same way a college professor would come to you and say, hey, if you want to get started with investing, these are the things that you need to consider. And so that was the way that he was able to fulfill his skill and his goal while still staying within the parameters of what his job and his registration required.

ANTHONY: And how did you, as his coach, his advisor, I guess mentor even, how did you pull that out of him, how did you help him realize that teaching was his, was that really up front and center? He came to you and said I want figure out how do make money teaching, you know, how did that come about?

LATISHA: Well, actually what he first said that he wanted to do was he wanted to do one-on-one financial coaching, and when I chatted with him I said, well, you definitely need to make sure that this is actually something that you can do, and so he kinda had to go back, he had a very, kind of a flexible job, but eventually he said, well, I realize that this is, it’s gonna be a little bit difficult for me to maintain with my job and still be able to do this thing that I love, and he wasn’t ready to quit his job, he enjoyed doing what he was doing full-time, obviously the income is there, and he just wanted to take his skill and do it on the side and that’s fine. And so after we started talking, I asked him a couple questions and we really got deeper into his personality, his unique skills and what he wanted to do. That’s when we got a little bit closer into, okay, well I really would do great with teaching, it’s much easier to do that alongside of all of the regulations and everything, and it’s something that I enjoy. And so that’s what we decided to do with him.

ANTHONY: Interesting process. LaTisha, would you be comfortable doing a little bit of role-playing to sort of, so the folks listening can get a sense of what it’s like to get through this process?

ANTHONY: So, I don’t know, should I be me, or should I just kind of make up a fictional character, it won’t be fictional, it will be somebody I know but I won’t be giving out their name. And sort of like, you know, I am unhappy at my job, LaTisha, how do you help me get to figuring out my unique skill? That’s the point of this little exercise, like to show folks how you would help somebody figure out their unique skill, yeah, does that sound like something we can do here?

LATISHA: That sounds great, why don’t you be the fictional character, go ahead and give me a fictional name and then we’ll go from there.

ANTHONY: The person who this is knows exactly who it is so. All right, my name is Howard, let’s say. I work at a PR firm.

LATISHA: All right, Howard, so you mentioned that you work at a PR firm, and you don’t necessarily enjoy what you do. Is there any aspect of it that you actually do enjoy?

ANTHONY: I enjoy helping people figure out what they need, the people interactions are the best part of it for me.

LATISHA: Okay, so you’re interacting with people, are these the individual businesses or are they the corporations? So when you guys do your work at their PR firm, are you usually interacting with the individual that is the business owner or are you interacting with like the big corporation?

ANTHONY: So to be clear, Howard is in human resources at the PR firm.

LATISHA: Okay, human resources.

ANTHONY: I’m totally revealing who this is, but that’s fun.

LATISHA: Okay. So you work in human resources at a PR firm. Okay, great.

ANTHONY: Yeah, I enjoy the recruiting process and helping put people into their new jobs which is kind of a great experience, people are so happy when they get a new job. And I enjoy coaching my business partners and helping them figure out who they need to be hiring.

LATISHA: Okay, perfect, so you said that you really enjoy helping people, so what is it about recruiting and bringing people in to the new job that you really enjoy doing?

ANTHONY: I do feel, without breaking my arm patting myself on the back, I do feel that I’m good at identifying the right match, right, between the person and the job or the person and the person, or the person and the team, as the case may be. Right, just putting that all together.

LATISHA: Okay, and so how do you identify that good match? Are you, for example, asking them questions, are you just reading through their resume? Like how do you figure out what that good match is?

ANTHONY: So some of this I’m kind of guessing, LaTisha, as you can,

LATISHA: That’s fine.

ANTHONY: As you can tell.

LATISHA: We’re just role-playing, that’s fine, just go with it.

ANTHONY: So over the years I’ve just developed a skillset where I can read a resume or a LinkedIn profile and I can almost instinctively tell sort of right off there if it’s a red flag or not, and then when they come in just based on body language, demeanor, just some very basic people skills during the interview, it’s a pretty quick decision.

LATISHA: Great, so what I’m hearing is it sounds like you have a really strong skill in intuition and analysis, so you’re really good at reading over that resume, kind of analyzing and picking those things out and then you have that intuition when they actually come in like you mentioned with the body language. What you could do is you could take that skill, especially since you have a background in human resources, you could take that skill and you can either coach people on how to manage their body language, so that when they do go into an interview, they can immediately be viewed in a positive light, or you can take that skill, that analytical skill that you have, and then you can offer people help in reviewing or writing or critiquing their resume. Or you can put it all together and say hey, I’m gonna help you to be the perfect candidate for your next job, and then they can come to you, they can bring you their resume. You can work with them on body language and the nonverbal communication, and that could be your business. How does that sound, Howard?

ANTHONY: That actually sounds really, really excellent, what would be the next steps?

LATISHA: So the next steps to doing that is to essentially work with one person for free. Now, this is always what I recommend, because not only is it going to give you an opportunity to see if you actually want to do it, if there are some things about it that you do or don’t like, or things that you do or don’t want to add, and also it helps to show can you get results for this person? So because you already have a desire to do this and you already have a passion for it, it’s likely that people that have already been asking you questions, so you kind of go to that person who’s been asking you for help, and you say, hey, I’m looking to maybe start doing career coaching or career consulting for people, and I’d love to do a test run with you, and you’ve been asking me questions, I’d love to help you with your next job transition. And if we work together and I do a great job, I’m not asking for payment, the only thing that I would love from you is a testimonial. That’s how you get started, that would be your first step.

ANTHONY: Okay, I mean, this is, so I’m still wearing my Howard hat, that’s excellent advice, but for somebody who’s in some ways comfortable in my corporate job that’s kind of a scary leap, would you agree?

LATISHA: It is a scary leap. Now, here’s where it gets a little tricky. Typically when I do a conversation I’ll start asking different questions that go into like the mindset, are you really passionate about this? Is this really something you want to do? Is it just a hobby? Because there is that fear and so we’ve got to get down to the motivations behind that desire so that we can overleap that fear because the fear is gonna be really big and it’s gonna be staring you in the face. But motivations can be even stronger, so we’ve got to first attack the mindset, we’ve got to get really strong on what those motivations are so that when I give you that scary step of hey, go get your first client, then you’re like okay, I’m excited, I’m ready to go.

ANTHONY: So how often do you discover through this process that once you dig into fears and motivations you all realize hey, you know what, for this particular person, for this Howard or for this whoever, it actually might be best for them to just stay at their corporate job, based on their personality or their life and ease and whatnot, does that ever happen?

LATISHA: Absolutely, and so this is, I used to do a lot of free consult calls where I would say hey, if you want help figuring out your skill, like let’s just hop on the phone. And I realized that a lot of the conversations sort of ended like that, where they would say, okay, good, I’m excited, or they would say, okay, that sounds good, or whatever, but then they wouldn’t actually take action. So what I did instead was I’m willing to answer questions that people have, they can send me a message. They can contact or reach out to me via email or any way, but instead of providing my time on a phone call, we essentially just go through that process via email or via messenger, and then I give that assignment to go take that action. Once they’ve taken the action and they’ve gotten their first client and first testimonial, then we can start talking about potentially working together in a paid capacity with me as the coach. And that’s the reason why I’ve done that is because sometimes that fear is too big for that person and they essentially just kind of give up. And there’s nothing wrong that, but it happens.

ANTHONY: From one business person to another, that’s a very strong qualifier that you’ve put onto your leads to make them do that before you’ll spend one-on-one time. I think it’s great, by the way, but that’s interesting, that’s an interesting technique.

LATISHA: Absolutely, and I think for any business owner they kind of know who is the person who is ready to take action and to get started, and when I first started my business I didn’t quite know what that screening process needed to be. And now with any of my programs, because I work with beginners, I have to be very careful and I have to say you must have at least one testimonial, you must have worked with at least one client because before you get there if you’re essentially dabbling, it’s gonna be really hard for me to help you get results because we’re really gonna have to dig deep and go into the mindsets and motivation behind everything. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but like I said, that takes some time, right, takes some shifting. And so any business owner they know like, hey, even if I’m the person who’s gonna go paint someone’s house and I say, hey, when do you want to get started with this? And they say, well, I’m just kind of getting quotes. Well then you know not to waste too much time with that person because they’re just in the process of getting quotes, they’re not actually saying, okay, I need to get my home painted next week. So if they don’t have a date that they want to get their home painted, then you kinda know that they’re not quite ready to make a decision. So every business owner should have some sort of screening in place where they know for sure that this person is ready to take the next step with us working together.

ANTHONY: That’s a great tip for pretty much any business. You can really get swamped and have your time sucked away by, think in real estate they call ’em lookie-loos. You kind of specialize, in your materials you talk about your introvert sales coaching, and I think this might be particularly useful to folks coming out of corporate who have never had to close a sale or a deal before. So can you talk a little bit about that?

LATISHA: Sure, so I use what’s called an introvert-friendly sales system and I call it it introvert-friendly because if you’re an introvert or if you know an introvert, if you’re familiar with introverts, we get really, really drained by expending energy in meaningless conversations, chitchat, networking events, those types of things are very draining to an introvert. Now, there’s nothing that says that we can’t be outgoing. I’m an outgoing introvert, I know lots of outgoing introverts. It’s not about being outgoing versus shy, it’s just about what energizes you as a person and what drains you as a person. And typically for an introvert, the draining thing is gonna be meaningless conversations, chitchat, talking about the weather, things like that, but if you get us talking about something we’re really interested in, well then that’s very energizing. So an introvert-friendly sales system looks a little something like this, we make sure that the person who is coming through, in order to actually get on a call with us has been qualified several times. So not only have they taken the time to say yes to whatever free offer we’re giving them, whether it’s a PDF or a free video series or a free training, they’ve said yes to that, they’ve said yes to coming onto our email list, they’ve said yes to continuing to engage with us either via social or whatever other elements we have in place. And then by the time we get on the phone with them in order to make that sale, they are talking about the same thing we want to talk about which is getting to work right away. And that’s what the introvert-friendly sales system is all about because there’s all of these pieces and there’s all of these steps and essentially hurdles that the perspective client has to go through before they actually get the opportunity to get on the phone with us and start working together. And so that’s the introvert-friendly sales system.

ANTHONY: So, do all of your system necessarily culminate in a sales call, or do any of your systems exist completely on recorded webinars or sales pages? Just out of curiosity.

LATISHA: Yeah, so actually the majority of my sales these days come through Facebook Messenger, and typically those sales happen after someone watches a webinar or they’ve gotten a free video series. I typically do videos, so a free video series or a webinar, and then I have like a sales page that obviously kind of explains the rest of the offer. And then I have a button that says message me if you’re interested. We have the opportunity to kind of chat together over Messenger, and then they may come in and choose to work with me. Sometimes I’ll do sales calls if the person seems like they need a little bit more of a chat, and that’s fine, there are some people who, they just prefer to talk on the phone and I’m absolutely fine with that. The majority of my clients tend to be introverts as well. We’re really good at knowing what we want, and we don’t really need to get on the phone. We’re the type of person where we see something we want, we take that time to read through everything, understand it all, and then by the time we know we’re ready to buy, it’s really just a matter of sending a quick message for any final thoughts or questions and then getting started. I often also have conversations in person if I’m doing a speaking engagement or I’m at a conference, then sometimes I’ll have conversations in person before the sale’s made.

ANTHONY: I think that’s all I had for you today, I mean this is all really great, and thank you for walking through that role-play with me by the way.

LATISHA: Yeah, absolutely.

ANTHONY: Do you have any final sort of tips or takeaways that someone could maybe do on their own or think about on their own that might lead them down the path to contacting you in the future?

LATISHA: Yeah, sure, so I would say the first thing is if you feel like you have a unique skill or there’s something that you want to kind of turn into a side business, then you definitely want to check out the videos that I have that will kind of take you through the thought process. I’ve got an entire YouTube channel talking about how to get started, how to figure out what your unique skill is and all of that. Those details are at latisha.tv, you can just type that into your browser, it’ll take you right there. And then if you’d like to see the introvert-friendly sales system, I’ve actually set up a special link for your audience. They can just go to latishastyles.com/smw for simple money wins, right, S-M-W, and that’ll take you directly to the start of the introvert-friendly sales system so if you’d like to see, like, okay, I want to start this business and I want to start taking my skill and start helping people, but I also don’t necessarily want to start getting on sales calls and doing all this. So take a look at the process, see how it goes, and then you can see how you can use it for your business. Everything else is available at latishastyles.com.

ANTHONY: And are you active on social, can people ping you on Twitter or anything like that?

LATISHA: I am, I’m most active on Instagram, and I’ve got the links and everything to that on my website when you go to latishastyles.com.

ANTHONY: This has been really, really great, thank you so much for jumping on. I think this is gonna be a very popular one, a lot of good, good gems in here.

LATISHA: Awesome, thanks Anthony, appreciate the time.

ANTHONY: Thank you. Everyone else, make sure to visit LaTisha’s page, I’ll put that information in the show notes. Otherwise, don’t forget to hit subscribe and go to anthonyspark.com to join our email list for updates and exclusive offers. Take care, talk to you later.